OREANDA-NEWS. November 18, 2011. Under favorable weather conditions, it is expected to collect sugar beets from an area of 537.3 hectares and produce 2 million tons of sugar - 500 thousand tons more than in 2010. This was started by Minister of Agrarian Policy and Food Mykola Prysyazhnyuk during a meeting after the session of the Cabinet.

"The crop of sugar beets and sugar amounts that farmers produced this year - he said - will enable completely to provide a home market, to keep price stability for this important product and to create an export potential".

However, the Minister said that today the Russian Federation has not given permission to export sugar to its territory. "But now there is reason to predict that the EU will give quotas next year, so we can export sugar to the EU", - he added.

Mykola Prysiazhniuk also noted that sustainable development of the sugar industry and increase production required protection of the domestic market which, "unfortunately, remains vulnerable to this time, particularly on imported sugar from the Republic of Belarus within the framework of the Free Trade Agreement."

The Minister said that now it was actively conducted search of foreign markets for domestic sugar. In particular the Ministry held negotiations with the countries which want to buy Ukrainian sugar, among them - China, Afghanistan and other countries of Asia.